The slug tore into the window frame six inches to the right of Sartain’s face.
“Goddamnit!” Sartain winced as wood slivers pricked his cheek. One bit into his right eye. He stumbled backward, shaking his head, blinking.
Outside, Scudder triggered his Spencer again. The second bullet seared a hot line across the left side of Sartain’s neck before thudding into a ceiling support post behind him.
That kicked up the fury that The Revenger harbored for all men of the law but especially for this motley bunch of hypocritical ambushers who’d obviously had never taken into account that an innocent woman was in the saloon with Sartain when they’d started throwing lead at him. Ignoring the pain in his watering eye and bullet-burned neck, he racked another cartridge and fired.
The bullet punched into Scudder’s shoulder just as Scudder had leveled his rifle once more. The deputy triggered his shot wild as he twisted around and fell, screaming and clutching at his bloody neck. He regained his feet and ran stumbling back in the direction from which he’d come, the flames of the burning whiskey obscuring him.
Sartain cursed as he stepped over the windowsill and out onto the saloon’s front porch. He leaped off the porch into the street, jogged several feet after the retreating Scudder. He stopped and raised his rifle.
As Scudder ran into the mouth of the break he’d run out of, Sartain hurled three more quick shots at him. All three tore into the deputy’s back and punched him forward and down. He rolled, howling, and disappeared in the shadowy break.
Loud footsteps thumped behind Sartain.
The Revenger wheeled to see a man bolting out of the saloon’s front door. The five-pointed star of Rio Rosa’s town marshal, Wayne Tatum, glinted in the drab sunlight as, grinning, Tatum stopped on the porch and bore down on Sartain with his Colt’s revolving rifle.
Sartain cursed. The man had him.
A gun popped hollowly.
Sartain winced.
Tatum’s eyes widened in shock as he jerked forward and fired his rifle into the ground three feet in front of Sartain’s widely spread boots.
From inside the saloon came another hollow pop.
Tatum again jerked forward. He stumbled down the steps into the street, stitching his brows together in shock. Dropping his rifle, he swung around, wobbling as though drunk.
His eyes widened as Olivia Rosen walked out through the saloon’s front door. She held a smoking .41-caliber pocket pistol in her right fist.
The pistol barked once more. She’d blinked as she’d fired it, her jaws set hard in anger. Tatum grunted sharply and staggered backward, clutching the hole in his right side.
“What?” he cried. “What the...”
“How dare you try to stop a man who is only trying to bring me and my dead son justice?” She fired again. “How dare you try to stop a man who doing your job for you, you pathetic waste?” She fired again.
She would have sent a sixth round hurling into Tatum but the hammer dropped with a benign ping against the firing pin. She hadn’t needed the sixth bullet anyway. Tatum lay on his back in the street, quivering as he died.
Sartain was as shocked as Tatum. He looked at Miss Rosen, who stood atop the dilapidated porch, lowering her smoking Merwin & Hulbert as she stared in hard-jawed anger at the fast-dying lawman.
A loud clattering rose to Sartain’s right. He whipped his rifle around as a pile of moldering crates tumbled onto the boardwalk facing what had once been a dry goods store. The falling crates revealed the young man, maybe nine or ten years old, who had apparently been cowering behind the stack. He wore a floppy-brimmed hat and a ratty canvas coat two sizes too big for him.
The kid stared in wide-eyed shock at The Revenger aiming his Winchester at him. He slid his terrified gaze to Olivia Rosen and then to the dead lawman on the street.
Throwing up his hands, palms out, he squealed, “Please don’t kill me!” then wheeled and ran off down a break between the dry goods store and a barbershop.
Sartain lowered his Winchester with a sigh and turned to Miss Rosen still standing atop the saloon porch with the pistol in her hand.
“Crap,” he said.
Chapter 6
Pinkerton Special Agent Carl Warner rode into the bustling little settlement of Rio Rosa in the late afternoon as the spring, high-country air acquired a sharp, metallic chill and the smell of burning mesquite and piñon pine laced the wind.
A dog came running out from under a boardwalk to nip at the hocks of Warner’s horse, which he’d rented in Denver. The horse bucked and kicked, catching Warner by surprise. The Pinkerton nearly tumbled out of his saddle while a couple of good-looking young women watched, tittering behind upraised hands, from a boardwalk fronting a haberdashery shop.
When Warner had regained his perch, he drew his sidearm and, gritting his teeth, embarrassed and incensed, turned to look for the devious mongrel. But apparently, well-practiced in the ways of harassing newcomers while evading censure, the dog just then pulled its tail into its hideout beneath the boardwalk fronting the sprawling Rio Grande Hotel.
The dog poked its head out from hiding, glanced in devilish delight at the angry Pinkerton, then, spying the man bearing down on him with a silver-plated revolver, jerked its blunt, mottled brown and black snout back out of sight beneath the porch.
“Vermin!” Warner bit out through gritted teeth, returning his ivory gripped Bisley .45 to its holster positioned for the cross-draw on his left hip, beneath the flap of his tailored, fur-collared buckskin coat. “Not only rotten, but yellow, to boot!”
The Pinkerton had purchased the coat for thirty-five dollars back in Chicago, where he was headquartered. The rakishly handsome detective of royal German stock did not skimp on his attire. Clothes may not make the man, but they sure made him look a whole lot better. And they certainly made him, an Easterner, stand out in a crowd of uncouth, raggedy-clad Westerners, that was for damn sure.
Good Lord, did these people ever bathe?
Warner tipped his hat to the snickering girls, cursed them under his breath while imagining punishing them both in bed until they squealed like tortured squaws, and then returned his attention to the handsome hotel.
At least the mangy cur had pointed out to Warner what looked from all appearances like a decent flophouse, though he knew that facades often lied out here on this canker on the Devil’s ass known as the American West. The linens were probably teeming with bedbugs, and pocket mice were likely nesting in bureau drawers.
Nevertheless, a man had to take what he could get in these parts.
Warner would secure a room soon, but only after he’d found his colleague, Bradley Decker, whom he’d been ordered to rendezvous with here in Rio Rosa concerning the matter of the vigilante these unwashed frontier folk in all their maudlin romanticism and provincial melodrama had dubbed “The Revenger.”
Having been unable to run the crazy, bloodthirsty ex-Confederate to justice itself, the federal government had secretly contracted with the Pinkertons to assist in that pursuit. Thus, Decker had been sent here to Rio Rosa, where it had been reported that Sartain had been sighted on several occasions and where he might even be holing up temporarily.
Apparently, Decker had confirmed that suspicion and had cabled the Pinkerton Agency for assistance.
Warner was that assistance. He’d worked with Decker before and come close to liking the man despite seeming somewhat full of himself...
Warner rode on up the street to the south, looking for the county courthouse. That was where he was supposed to check in when he reached the town and arrange a meeting with Decker. The courthouse was not hard to pick out amongst Rio Rosa’s mostly humble adobe or squat wood-frame business buildings surrounding the town’s central plaza, near what appeared an ancient Catholic church. Shaded by dusty greenery, the county headquarters was impressive as courthouses went on the frontier.
This one was two stories and constructed of stone.
There were no pillars and no colonnade, but
as though to compensate for the lack, the county powers-that-be had crowned the bulky structure with a domed and gilded cupola complete with the figure of Blind Justice. Atop Justice’s head, a turkey buzzard was just now perched, dipping its own, ugly, bald head to peruse Rio Rosa’s bustling main-street traffic with greedy interest, as though it expected to find something dead in one of the passing farm or ranch wagons.
Directly across the street from the courthouse sat the town marshal’s office, a seedy-looking little mud-adobe building with a half-story addition built of vertical, unpainted pine boards and sporting a single, barred window. Apparently, the addition housed the city jail.
To the Pinkerton’s judicious eye, the structure was a lingering testament to Rio Rosa’s even humbler Mexican origins...
Warner put his horse up to the courthouse and dismounted. His polished, black boots sunk nearly ankle deep in the mud that remained after a snowy, rainy Rio Rosa winter. He scraped off what he could of the nasty mire on the boardwalk fronting the place, then walked inside to find a directory announcing the sheriff’s office on the second floor.
He went upstairs and knocked on a door sporting leaded glass in its upper panel with the words COUNTY SHERIFF JACK EPPS in gold-leaf lettering. Watery lamplight glowed beyond the cloudy glass. Warner tried the door.
Locked.
On the other side of the door, a girl laughed. A man shushed her angrily.
There was a good bit of busy bustling around inside the office, boots thumping, what sounded like a belt buckle clanking, and more snickers from the girl, before the door was unlocked. It was pushed open one foot.
A narrow, bearded face with a long nose and a wart the size of a sewing thimble sprouting out the side of it, pushed through the one-foot gap. Two murky green-brown eyes set too close together looked Warner up and down, and the skin above the nose wrinkled.
“What?” the man said with annoyance.
The girl snorted in the shadows behind him. Then Warner saw her—a Mexican girl—step into view from behind a bank of filing cabinets. She was partly concealed by shadows, but she just then drew a ruffled red blouse over her chest while smiling naughtily.
Warner glanced at the lettering on the door again, making sure he’d gotten the right office. But, then, would a courthouse host a pleasure parlor?
“I’m looking for the sheriff,” he said, incredulous.
“Well, he ain’t here,” the head in the door said again with obvious annoyance.
“Who’re you?”
“Sam Spanish. Night deputy.” The seedy eyes flicked up and down. “Who’re you?”
“Carl Warner. Pinkerton. It’s not night.”
“No, but the sheriff and another fancy-pants Pinkerton like you and the town marshal went out on the trail with Al Stanley and Riley Scudder. Now, if you’ll excuse me...” He glanced behind him then turned to Warner once more. “I was gettin’ a French lesson.”
Spanish winked, pulled his head into the office, and started to close the door. Warner stopped the door with his foot.
“Where did they go?”
Spanish sighed impatiently. “I don’t know. I didn’t talk to any of ‘em. They just sent a kid, Pepe Banderas, over to my boardinghouse to tell me to man the office till they got back. That’s all I know. Now, if you don’t mind...”
Warner cursed and pulled his foot away. Spanish closed the door and locked it. On the other side of the glass, he heard the night deputy say, “Now, where was we, chiquita?”
Warner cursed again as he started back down the stairs. Worry nettled him. Had Decker and the local lawdogs gone after The Revenger?
If so, and if they had captured the bastard, Warner was going to have his neck in a hump, as the Western saying went. (He’d heard it on the train out from Chicago.) Ever since the Pinkerton Agency had contracted with the feds to go after Sartain, Warner had secretly hoped he’d be the one to find the man and take him down.
That would be one gaudy feather in his hat.
It would mean a sure-fire promotion and pay raise not to mention a laudatory newspaper write-up or two. Bradley Decker probably harbored the same hope, but since the detective had asked for assistance, he could have at least waited for it to get here before he’d headed out after their quarry.
Unless he’d been afraid Sartain would slip away...
Oh, well, Warner thought, plucking a cigar from inside his coat and biting off the end when he hit the street fronting the courthouse. There was nothing he could do now but wait to hear if he’d made the trip down from Denver for nothing.
He lit the cigar and enjoyed the twenty-five-cent stogie he’d purchased on Denver’s Larimer Street while he looked for and found a livery barn—Continental Livery & Feed—where he arranged to have his mount fed, curried, and stabled. The barn flanked the Rio Grande, so Warner didn’t have far to walk after he’d paid the liveryman a Pinkerton voucher for the horse’s tending.
He tossed the remains of his cigar into the muddy street fronting the hotel, mounted the broad front steps, and entered the lobby through the heavy oak doors boasting ornate windows in their upper panels.
A spry-looking, blue-eyed blond young woman with a pixyish face and wearing a crisp cream gown and faux pearl-studded choker stood behind the lobby counter. She had her hair piled in a couple of conservative buns atop her pretty head, but her sparkling eyes and proud bosom told Warner she wasn’t as prim and proper as her employer instructed her to dress.
“Hello there, beautiful woman!” Warner dropped his monogrammed leather war bag onto the floor at his feet, tossed his gloves onto the counter with a flourish, and bestowed upon the girl his outlandishly rakish smile. He needed no mirror to know that his copper eyes were wolfishly narrowed and trimmed wonderfully by his long, copper lashes.
“Why, hello,” the girl said, flushing and nervously brushing her fingers across her neck as she sized up the tall, broad-shouldered, red-haired, red-mustached stranger before her. “Looking for a room, are you, sir?”
Warner unbuttoned his coat so the girl could get a good look at his black wool cutaway and the fawn-colored waistcoat beneath it. A gold-washed chain connected the 18-carat-gold Swiss pocket watch residing in the waistcoat’s right pocket to the fob pinned inside the left one. He could see that she got a look at that, as well, for as her eyes flicked low across his torso, the glint of approbation shone in them.
When she raised her eyes to his, her cherry lips parted to show her perfect, porcelain-white upper teeth.
“Indeed, I am,” Warner said, folding his arms across his chest and leaning intimately against the mahogany desk so that his head was only two feet from the girl’s. She smelled wonderful, like a field of spring flowers on the banks of a clear Upper Midwestern stream on a dewy May morning. “A room and a beautiful young woman to spend the evening with would be just what the doctor ordered.”
The Pinkerton winked.
The girl’s parchment pale cheeks flushed a deeper shade of red than before, and she tittered a nervous laugh. “Well, I can most certainly help you with the room, sir. But the young woman...that, I am afraid, you are going to have to see to for yourself. Please don’t tell anyone I told you so, but I do happen to know that there is a parlor house of some repute just down the street. I’ve heard Señor Sanchez—he’s my boss—recommend it to certain male guests from time to time. I hear the doves are spendy, but you appear to be...”
She let her voice trail off when she saw Warner grimly shaking his head.
“What is it, sir?”
“Doves due pavé are not my cup of tea, dear heart.”
“No?”
“A gentleman doesn’t pay for intimacy. Besides, there’s always the risk of Cupid’s itch. I’ve never had it myself, but I’ve known several poor slobs who have.” Warner leaned closer and, smiling, said into the lively cherub’s ear, “There were times they wanted to trim away the infected organs in question with a rusty bow saw!”
“Oh, my gosh!” The girl laughe
d into her hand then looked around sheepishly, snickering and snorting.
“An unseemly affair, tumbling with strangers,” Warner said, keeping his resonate voice low and intimate.
He’d always enjoyed the effect his voice—having both a manly and sonorous timbre, he’d been told by members of the fairer sex—had on women. One woman from Chicago’s upper crust had once told him—before he’d bedded her and then strangled her and thrown her in the South Branch of the Chicago River—that she’d wanted to expose herself to him the first time he’d heard him speak, and he’d merely been asking a hansom cab driver for directions!
“Well, I certainly agree about the unseemliness of such a union, but...”
“What time do you get off, pretty lady?”
“Me?”
“Of course, you. What’s wrong? Oh, I suppose there’s a boy.”
“Well, no.” She beetled her brows. “I don’t have much time to spend with boys. You see, my mother died two years ago, and my father is a traveling farm implement salesman. He’s not very good at his job, so he doesn’t bring in much...”
“Ohh!” Warner sucked sympathetically through his teeth, frowning. “Misery is the way of the world, dear heart. We must take our pleasures where we can find them.”
“I don’t get off work until ten o’clock tonight,” the girl said, looking around cautiously and keeping her voice down.
Her ears had turned bright red. Warner watched her pink tongue curl against the edges of her perfect white teeth as she spoke. He could feel her breath puff lightly against his cheek, arousing him further.
“Even if I were available tonight, Pa forbids me to go out when he’s not home—he’ll be in Cheyenne until Monday—though why he bothers to forbid it, I don’t know. As I’ve said, I have little time for a social life. And there’s one more thing...”
She looked at the open register book.
“What’s that?” Warner prodded.
She looked at him again. “I’m only sixteen.”
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